Recycling of waste materials is highly desirable from many viewpoints, not the least of which are financial and ecological. Properly sorted recyclable materials often can be sold for significant revenue. Many of the more valuable recyclable materials do not biodegrade within a short period. Therefore, recycling such materials significantly reduces the strain on local landfills and ultimately the environment.
Separation and recovery of solid waste and waste-stream components can be accomplished using many techniques, processes and devices. Costs and complexity of separation, particularly the inability to provide clean/perfect separation of recoverable fractions, are the usual drawbacks, delivering a disadvantage to many recycling processes where the process costs more than the resulting recovered/recoverable materials are capable of generating in the market. The quantity of waste to be treated has a direct effect on the ability to use known processes for separation and recovery of components, and/or the cost-effectiveness of those processes. This combination of diverse materials and diverse material sizes, densities, shapes and moisture content provide a unique challenge in separating and recycling specific materials in an efficient manner. The ability to efficiently separate and concentrate recyclable materials at high throughputs from the different waste streams reduces the negative environmental impact of these materials, as less of this residue will be disposed of in landfills.
Accordingly, there is always a need for improved separation techniques and systems. It is to this need, among others, that this disclosure is directed.